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Effect of cigarette smoking on ACTH/cortisol secretion in alcoholic after short- and medium-term abstinence
1Centro di Alcologia-Dipartimento di Medicina Interna e Sciente Bionediche, Parma, Italy. Delsi@ipruniv.cce.unipr.it
Background:
To gain a better insight into the alterations of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis in alcoholism, we evaluated the ACTH response to nicotine inhaled from cigarette smoking (two nonfilter cigarettes in succession within 10 min) in nine nonalcoholic men and nine age- and weight-matched alcoholic men who had been addicted to alcohol for at least 8 years. All subjects were regular cigarette smokers.
Methods:
Alcoholic men were tested after 2 weeks of abstinence, when the possible interferences because of alcohol assumption or the acute withdrawal period had completely ceased, and again after 12 weeks of abstinence.
Results:
At both 2 and 12 weeks of abstinence, basal plasma ACTH and cortisol levels were not significantly different in the alcoholic men from those observed in the control group. In the control group subjects, cigarette smoking induced a striking increase in the circulating concentrations of ACTH and cortisol, with peak responses 1.4 and 1.5 times higher than baseline at 20 and 30 min, respectively. In contrast, no significant ACTH/cortisol increase was observed in alcoholic subjects at any time after cigarette smoking in any test.
Conclusion:
These data suggest that alterations of nicotinic cholinergic transmission occur in the control of ACTH secretion in the alcoholic men, providing further evidence of modification of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis in alcoholism.